


Places in the Mind

by Calais_Reno



Series: Just Johnlock [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: After the tarmac, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, BAMF John Watson, Don't copy to another site, Drugs, Heavy Angst, Hurt Sherlock Holmes, Love Confessions, M/M, Memory Loss, POV Sherlock Holmes, Pining, Protective John Watson, Regret, Rescue, Sherlock's Mind Palace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:26:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25383055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calais_Reno/pseuds/Calais_Reno
Summary: John rescues Sherlock in Serbia after he is wounded. This takes place after the Tarmac scene.“Sherlock.” I love his voice. It makes me think of somewhere else, somewhere warm. There is tea and marmalade and there is John. I am safe.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: Just Johnlock [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1856749
Comments: 31
Kudos: 180





	Places in the Mind

**Author's Note:**

> Note: No major characters die.

“Do you trust me?” John is looking at me intently. His face is dirty and the cut over his right eyebrow is bleeding a bit. His eyes are dark, lovely as always. “Sherlock, focus.”

“I trust you, John.”

“You must stay with me, and be absolutely quiet. I can get us out of here. Stay focused on me.”

“I will, John.” His name falls off my tongue as if I’ve been saying it all my life. I don’t know what this means. I’ve known him for two days, since he found me here. Wherever here is.

There are voices. John is tense, alert. Pressed up against him, I can feel every muscle in his body poised to run.

I can’t hear what the voices are saying, but they recede, and as soon as they do, John grabs my arm and begins pulling me out of our hiding place, a damp shed behind an old stone house. I’m a bit unsteady, and I try to assess why this is. My leg hurts, so perhaps I was injured. It’s my head, though, that is wrong. I ought to be as anxious as John is, but all I feel is lassitude.

I’ve been drugged. That must be what happened.

John steadies me and we head down the street. We’re in a city, an old city with paving-stone streets. I hear voices drifting out of a window, someone speaking Romanian.

There is someone we’re going to meet, but I’ve forgotten who it is. Someone who can help us get out of here. John is a soldier, sent here to rescue me. I cling to him.

He practically has to carry me. I try not to think about how much it hurts. Instead, I think about how strong his arms feel, how much I trust him. He will get us out of here. Finally, he sets me down. I keep my eyes closed.

“Sherlock.” I love his voice. It makes me think of somewhere else, somewhere warm. There is tea and marmalade and there is John. I am safe.

“Home,” I mumble.

“Sherlock, all right?”

I nod. “Are we going home?”

He strokes my hair, pulling the long tangles off my face. “I’m trying. A little longer. Is the pain too much? Can you hold out?”

I smile up at him. I can stand anything, I think, as long as he’s here. “‘M fine.”

He smiles back and I feel a stab of affection so deep that tears come to my eyes.

“John.” I just want to say his name. I whisper it. “ _John_.”

“You’re going to be all right.” His voice chokes a bit when he says this.

I hear footsteps and feel John tense again. He relaxes then. “It’s Marco. He’s taking us to a safe house.”

I think of the safest place I can imagine. A fireplace, logs blazing. Two chairs. John is sitting opposite me, smiling. I’m holding the cup of tea he’s made for me.

I wake up and it’s light outside. People are talking in the other room. Romanian. I had most of the Eastern European languages mapped to my brain before coming here, but just the basic courses. It wasn’t like I was planning to read literature.

“How do you feel?” He sounds tired.

I reach down and feel my leg, where the pain originates. A bulky bandage circles my thigh. “What happened to me?”

“You were shot. I’ve cleaned the wound and given you antibiotics. One piece of luck— it missed the femoral artery. Looks good, but I’ll keep an eye on it.”

“You’re a doctor.”

He smiles. “Yes.”

“An army surgeon. You were chosen to extract me because they knew I’d been wounded.”

He shrugs. “Best man for the job, I suppose.”

I rub my eyes and look around the room. I’m somewhere in Eastern Europe, in a safe house. I can smell cabbage cooking. I hear the voices of men and women talking, arguing. A telly is on in the other room. “What am I doing here?”

“Getting well enough to get the hell out of here.”

“No, I mean… I don’t remember anything.” Then I understand. “I was captured. They gave me drugs.”

He nods. “You were doing undercover work.”

The man he calls Marco comes into the room. “Mycroft’s people are coming,” he tells John. “Two days, he said.”

John nods. “I wish it could be sooner, but we’ll take what we can get.”

 _Mycroft_ , I think. I begin to remember. My brother sent me on a mission here, to take apart a human trafficking ring. I was captured. I don’t remember much after that. Until John.

He sits with me, makes sure I eat and drink, helps me use the loo and checks my wound. He knows what I want before I know, says the right things to soothe me. And he knows Mycroft. He must be special ops, I think. Mycroft knows the right man for every job.

“Where are you from?” I ask him.

“Northumberland, originally,” he says.

“You’ve spent years in London. I can tell by your accent. You must have gone to school there.”

He nods. “University of London, Barts.”

“You’ve taken off your wedding ring just recently. Divorced?”

He shakes his head. “It’s complicated. There are things… I didn’t realise.”

I study him silently, taking in the embarrassed hang of his head, the hands that fidget with the finger where a fading indentation shows me he wore a ring. Until recently. Not an affair, I think.

_You weren’t supposed to be like that._

“She wasn’t who you thought she was,” I say. “You found out something about her that disturbed you.”

He huffs a small laugh. “Shut up, Sherlock.”

The following day I’m better, and we practice walking. John puts his arm around my waist to steady me. It feels like something we’ve done a million times. I think what a good partner he could be for a consulting detective— a man who knows how to handle a gun, a doctor who’s used to treating the results of violence.

“Afghanistan or Iraq?” I say as he settles me into a chair. “You were wounded. Left shoulder.”

He is giving me a look I can’t decipher. I know that my peculiar skill annoys some people, but he doesn’t look annoyed. He looks sad, I think.

“Afghanistan,” he says. I expect him to tell me how it happened, but he is silent. Clearly he has PTSD. But there’s more to his silence than that. 

It’s daylight now, and John is asleep beside me. I can hear the family stirring in the next room. The mattress is lumpy and smells of mould. Better than sleeping on a floor, though. My joints tell me that I’ve done a lot of that. Weeks, maybe months.

I study John’s face by the light that filters into our room.

He is about forty, I think, a man who has spent time outdoors. A military veteran, wounded and invalided home after Afghanistan. And then what? He’s a doctor, so maybe he returned to practice, working in a surgery. But he left his practice for this mission. He didn’t want to, but felt a moral obligation to do so.

Mycroft has a lot of people like John, people who owe him something so they’re willing to report for duty whenever he taps them. I wonder what John owes him.

He’s been awake all night, I think, while I slept, and has only been asleep for an hour or so. Now that it’s day, he will sleep a few hours, make sure I’m rested and healing, and we’ll eat something. In another day, we’ll move. That’s the plan he and Marco have discussed. Another safe house, and then extraction.

Marco brings me coffee and a slice of bread with cheese. The coffee here is so strong and thick, almost like the coffee they serve in Greece. They call it Turkish. I remember a holiday there when I was in my teens, Mycroft leading me through the streets of Athens to a small restaurant he wanted to try. We had baklava and Turkish coffee. He made me try ouzo too, while we were there, just so I would be well-educated about local food. I didn’t like it.

John sleeps until early afternoon. I watch him beginning to wake up. He draws a deep breath, but doesn’t open his eyes. His face relaxes again and he breaths regularly, entering a lighter sleep cycle. For a while he remains in the same position, curled towards me almost protectively. I want to lie next to him and put my arms around him. I don’t know why I feel this. It makes no sense to want to hug someone you’ve just met.

I reach towards him, touch his hair. It’s much softer than it looks, blond with plenty of grey, lighter than the stubble on his face. His hair is cropped close, but I imagine it longer, combed back off his forehead.

At my touch, his eyes open. They are dark blue. At first I thought they were brown, but when I see them up close, they are almost navy blue, with glints of amber in them.

He’s smiling at me. “Good morning. How do you feel?”

“Much better,” I say. “I think I could travel, whenever it’s necessary.”

He sits up and rubs a hand over his head. He doesn’t say whether he believes we’ll have to move today, but I can see he’s thinking about it. Captain Watson is not a great talker. He keeps his own council until he has something definite to share. But his face is weary, guarded, and it tells me all I need to know.

Marco brings us soup and more bread. John tells me I should eat and then sleep until it’s dark. “We’re going to move tonight,” he says. “I’m worried that tomorrow will be too late, so…” He shrugs. It’s not a careless shrug, but one that means we’re out of options. “It’ll be all right.”

I don’t feel like sleeping, but I stretch out on the bed, obedient to my doctor’s orders. He sits in a chair, watching the street through a gap in the curtains, his revolver in his hand. I’ve deduced that we’re on a side street, so there’s not a lot of traffic.

“What languages did they map to your brain?” I ask.

“Serbian and Romanian. I didn’t have much time, so it’s just basic.” He looks at me. There’s something he wants to ask, but he won’t. Instead, he says, “They can delete memories too, you know.”

I nod. “Still experimental, but it’s the same principle as mapping new information, only blocking the synapses in specific areas. I’m not sure why it would be useful, though.”

“You never wanted to forget something?”

“I’ve deleted things I don’t need to remember. It’s not precisely the same. Memories are linked to other memories, especially sensory ones, and in my Mind Palace— do you know the method of loci?”

“I’m familiar with it, yes,” he says.

“It’s storing information by linking it to other information. The more sensory information you can include, the better. Since I’m a detective, this is very useful for retaining information that I don’t use often. I store it in a specific place in my Mind Palace, a room with all the sensory details of a real place. When I want to retrieve it, I go there. It’s like driving somewhere you haven’t been in a while; you can’t explain how to get there, but your mind instinctively remembers. So if information is not useful, let’s say some basic facts about astronomy, I put them in a place that’s less frequented.”

“So you wouldn’t delete anything you considered important?”

“No, of course not.”

He looks down at his hands, frowning.

“Well,” I add, “even if I did, there is always at least one thread that will lead me to it.” I smile at him. “You know the story of the Minotaur? Theseus used a ball of thread to lead him back. It’s called a clew, a thread you can follow out of the maze.”

“You should sleep now,” he says.

It’s dark when he wakes me again. He’s wearing a knit cap and a dark jacket. He hands me the same. “Time to go,” he says. “Stay close.”

I hope I don’t have to run. My leg is still stiff and painful, and I don’t want to slow John down. Marco walks ahead, John behind me.

Without turning, I can sense him, a protective presence that is reassuring. In some way, I feel as if he’s been following me for a long time, watching my back. I see myself on the streets of London, hear his footsteps behind me. I’m running across rooftops, and there he is, just a pace behind, gun in his pocket. _John, my protector. My John._

We pause in an alley. “Wait,” Marco says. He heads back to the street. We see him look in both directions. Someone is following, perhaps.

John doesn’t speak, but lays his hand on my arm. He knows where we’re going and will get us safely there, his look says.

We hear a pop and he tenses, pulls me behind a skip. After a long moment, he finally peers around, then pulls back. “It’s Marco,” he whispers. “Shot.”

There are voices, one of them Marco’s. I can’t make out every word, but they seem to be asking him something and he is responding that he doesn’t know.

John eases us down, out of sight, makes me lie flat. It’s me they’re looking for. We both know this. If the voices leave, we will know it’s safe.

There is laughter, a single shot, and then and machine gun fire rakes across the alley, pinging off the metal skip. We remain silent, in hiding. I can feel John holding his breath.

When silence has stretched out for what seems like hours, we move. My leg is stiff and I’m afraid of stumbling. There isn’t time for wrong moves now. John is a pace ahead of me, his hand around my arm.

We walk for thirty minutes, I estimate, going down side streets, doubling back, avoiding anywhere there is light. At last, when I feel as if I can’t lift my feet and my head is going to split, we arrive at our destination.

The house is dark. We approach from the back, enter through a basement window. John sends me through first, and I sprawl on the floor. A moment later, he is collapsing beside me. We lie in the dark, our breathing ragged.

Finally he moves, produces a small torch and shines it around the room. It’s a stone cellar, dirt floor, no windows but the one we came through. I see now that it isn’t a window, but an old coal chute. A large furnace sits in the middle of the room, with ducts leading into the house above. An old house, built a century ago in a city that didn’t feel like a war zone.

He hands me the torch, grimaces, and begins to remove his jacket. I can see at once why he looks pained. His shoulder is bleeding.

“John.” I reach for him. “How bad?”

He shakes his head. “Didn’t hit anything major.”

“What can I do?”

“The bullet is still inside, and it won’t do any good to try and remove it now,” he says. “I’ll just try to stop the bleeding. We’ll have to wait it out.”

“How soon will they be coming for us?”

“A day. Maybe two.”

It’s hard to see by the light of the torch, and I wonder if he can hold out that long.

He smiles, painfully. “Same shoulder. Afghanistan.”

Using the torch, I examine his wound and can see the old scar around the bullet hole.

“Look in my pack,” he says. “I’ve got some gauze you can press into it. It’s not flowing fast enough that I’ll bleed out, but I’d like to keep as much blood as possible.”

He’s hurting, I can see, and weak. I find some antiseptic and the gauze and press it against the wound. He winces and sucks in a breath. “Jesus.”

I need to make him comfortable. Positioning myself behind him, against the wall, I lean him back against my chest. He relaxes. Placing an arm around him, I use my free hand to hold the gauze in place.

“Try to sleep,” I say.

He gives a feeble laugh. “Don’t wanna. Stay awake now. Talk to me.”

I try to decide what to talk about, but come up blank. He already knows about my mission, and he knows Mycroft, so he must know about me, too.

“Tell me about where you live,” he says.

“I grew up in Hampshire, but I’ve spent most of my life in London,” I begin. “I live on Baker Street, in Marylebone. Do you know the area?”

“Yes.”

“It’s an old terraced house, 221B. Probably built in the mid-nineteenth century. My landlady is Mrs Hudson. She gave me a good deal on the rent, or I wouldn’t have been able to afford such a nice area. I’m a consulting detective, and don’t get paid for cases I work with the police, but it brings in other cases which pay.”

“Describe your flat,” he whispers.

“It’s just an ordinary flat.”

“Describe it.”

“When you come through the door, there’s a sitting room. A sofa at one end of the room, a fireplace at the other, and a table halfway between, where I sometimes work.”

“Chairs?”

“Yes, I have a chair by the fireplace. It’s black leather. I do a lot of my thinking there, usually with a cup of tea beside me.” A wave of nostalgia sweeps over me. Tea isn’t the same in Eastern Europe. Nobody makes tea like—

“What else?”

I imagine myself sitting in my chair, surveying the room. “I can see the kitchen from here. Down the hall is my bedroom.”

“Who sits in the other chair?” His voice trembles.

“Are you in pain?” I ask. “Do you want me to see if there’s anything in your pack?”

He shakes his head. “No. Who sits in the other chair?”

“There isn’t another—“ I stop. In my mind, where there should be no chair obstructing my view of the kitchen, there is a chair. Red, a rather squashy looking chair. Not the sort of chair I prefer to sit in. It has a Union Jack pillow resting in it.

He sighs. “You don’t remember me.”

He sleeps for a while. In my Mind Palace, I’m sitting, looking at that red chair. There’s no one sitting there, and that seems wrong. Just beyond the chair is the kitchen, and beyond that is my bedroom. From my chair I can see a door that is closed. It might be a closet, but I think it’s something else. I rise from my chair and walk towards it, put my hand on the door knob and turn. It’s locked.

John stirs. The floor is cold and he’s shivering. The blood loss could do that, I think, but it doesn’t help that it’s freezing in here. I check his gauze. The bleeding has slowed, thankfully, but his skin is hot. His wound is most likely infected. Maybe Mycroft’s people are trying to find us now. I don’t know how they will do that. In fact, I have no idea where we are. But somebody must know. Someone will save John Watson.

“Sherlock,” he moans.

“John,” I whisper, putting my arms around him. “Stay with me.”

I hear him huff a little. “Always.”

“I wish…” I take his hand in mine.

He sighs. “What do you wish?”

“I wish I’d known you… before. I wish we’d been friends.”

He coughs. “No, you don’t,” he rasps.

“Why?”

“I’m a shite friend. I hurt the people I love…”

I stroke the hair off his face. “I know you, John. It’s only been a few days, but I can tell what sort of person you are. We would be best friends.”

He’s crying. “Sherlock.”

“I love you, John.” When I say this, I know it doesn’t make sense. How can I love a man I’ve only known a few days? But it’s true; I love John Watson. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to us, but I want you to know. I love you, and I’ll never leave you.”

“I’m sorry,” he sobs.

I let him weep for a while, curling my body around his. “Why are you sorry?”

“I’m sorry I hurt you. I should have said… a long time ago.”

“John, you could never hurt me.”

“But I did. I married her… I knew it was all wrong, but I was angry. So angry I didn’t see…” His breath is coming in gasps.

“It’s all right, John. Don’t talk.”

“No, I have to say it. I love you, Sherlock. I’ve always loved you.” He gasps. “Always you.”

“I don’t remember.” Two chairs, in front of a fire. I’m drinking tea. “They gave me drugs, the people who captured me. I don’t remember you before….”

I try to make sense out of this. Why would my captors want me to forget? And I haven’t forgotten everything. I know who I am, I remember why my brother sent me here. I remember my parents, my friends— Lestrade, Molly, Mrs Hudson. But I don’t remember John.

 _That door._ I can remember going up those stairs. Why is it locked now?

“Did they torture me? Did they give me something to make me talk?”

He’s shaking uncontrollably now. I lift him off the stone floor and pull him into my lap. Wrapping as much of myself around him as possible, I try to still his body.

“Sherlock.”

“Don’t talk, John. Someone will be here soon.” I don’t know if this is true, but this is where Marco said they would meet us. Word of our plan was received, so they must be here soon. Mycroft will find us. “Imagine we’re home. We’re warm, and dry. You’re reading the paper, and I’m—“

“Don’t. Please.”

“Hush,” I say. “I love you, John.”

“I know,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“You have no reason to be sorry.”

“I do,” he whispers. “You loved me, and I didn’t know. Then I thought you were dead, and I tried to move on, but I couldn’t… until Mary. And then you came back, and I was so angry with you.” He’s breathing hard, gasping for air.

I remember Moriarty. I jumped off the roof of Barts Hospital and pretended to be dead for two years so I could dismantle his operations. I remember coming back. But John wouldn’t know anything about that.

“John, it doesn’t matter. All I know is who you are now, and I love you. Whatever happened, whatever you did to hurt me, it doesn’t matter. I’m never going to stop loving you.”

“You don’t remember me.” He begins to weep.

“Tell me. How did we meet?”

He gives a watery laugh. “We were both looking for a flat share. My friend Mike introduced us. In the lab, at Barts.”

“Mike Stamford.” A shadow, an almost memory. _Afghanistan or Iraq?_

The door that was closed is now open, just a crack.

“So, we were flatmates.” I don’t know why I say this. I’ve never had a flatmate. I met John a few days ago.

I feel him nod. “Best friends.”

In my mind, I see him handing me his phone, his face wary. _Use mine._ I see him standing next to me, smiling. _Of course you’re my best friend._ I can see him still on the tarmac, a tiny figure disappearing in the distance.

“When I saw you, when I opened my eyes and you were leaning over me, cleaning my wound, I knew. You seemed familiar, but I couldn’t remember why.”

“Sherlock, you need to know. I always loved you, from the first. I didn’t think…”

“It’s all right, John. I know.”

“I’m sorry.” His voice is so soft, so full of love.

“I forgive you. The drugs they gave me may have wiped out my memories of you, but they did not erase my love for you. My heart knew you when I saw you.”

“Sherlock.” His chest heaves up and down.

“Hush, John. I think someone’s here.”

Footsteps on the floor upstairs. I am alert, listening, trying to deduce what’s happening. Two pairs of feet, two men. They’re walking around the room above us, looking… Something is happening. Someone is coming for us.

“Sherlock, I’m sorry.”

Footsteps. A door crashing open.

“John, there’s nothing to forgive.”

Gunfire, above us.

“I don’t know what drugs they gave you.” He coughs again and shivers. “But after you left— Mycroft told me…”

I huddle over John. Shots are still being fired upstairs. Automatic weapons. A body hits the floor, two bodies.

“You were being sent away,” he whispers. “On this mission. You’d killed a man for me. For Mary. And they sent you away. But after you went… Mycroft said…”

Things are quieter upstairs now. I can hear one person walking. A single shot. “Hush, John. There’s no need—“

“You wanted to forget me, so you could carry out your mission without…” He coughs again. “I’d hurt you. You needed to forget me. Mycroft said.” He gives a small sob. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know you loved me.”

I put my hand over his mouth, muffling him. “Hush.”

In the dark, I wait and listen. Under my hand, John is breathing raggedly. I look down at his face, partly illuminated by a bit of light from beneath the door. His eyes are open, watching me.

Someone has made a circuit of the room upstairs and is now approaching the stairs. A hand on the doorknob, the door opening… feet on the steps.

 _John, here. John Watson lives here, sits in this chair, makes tea in the kitchen. John—_ my _John— hangs his coat here, next to mine, and he doesn’t like experiments in the kitchen, and he sleeps upstairs, and…_

“I love you, John,” I whisper. “I can never forget you.”

Light pours through the open door, and I can see him clearly now. So beautiful. “I’ll always love you, John.”

He smiles and closes his eyes. I kiss his forehead.

A voice speaks. “Brother mine.”


End file.
